


The End of Winter: An Adventure in or about the Year 1895

by baronwaste



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:54:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9984029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baronwaste/pseuds/baronwaste
Summary: Holmes and Watson, in a year that may also be 1897, meet a Canadian visitor to London who knows more about them than they do themselves.





	

“Watson, you have my sympathy,” came the high-pitched drawl of my friend Sherlock Holmes, tinged on this occasion with at least a hint of mockery. “There can be nothing more disconcerting for a chronicler of events than to discover that he is not certain even of the year in which he is living.”

“I beg your pardon,” I responded with what I felt was admirable patience. “I grant that you have just observed me crumple up the sheet on which I was writing, and fling it in the direction of the waste-paper basket with a grunt of annoyance, but I said nothing whatever about years or about uncertainty.”

My friend chuckled, took a final mouthful of the breakfast coffee that I knew must now be revoltingly cold, and stood up from the table where he had remained after I had stepped over to my desk and attempted to begin my literary work.

“You said nothing in words, but your gestures told everything,” he assured me. “You will recall that, over your toast and bacon, you told me you intended to occupy this morning’s hours of leisure by writing out your notes of our recent adventure at Marsham, in Kent, and the not unwelcome death of Sir Eustace Brackenstall. When your pen began to travel over the paper in its customary fluent manner, I knew that you would, as you generally do, attempt first to record the date and other significant details. Indeed, I heard you murmur the words ‘toward the end of the winter’, and naturally the precise year would follow. But a moment later you crumpled your incipient narrative and tossed it away, and it was not difficult to conclude that you had made the mistake one so commonly makes towards the end of January each year, and had written ‘1896’ where ‘1897’ should have appeared. But the error is easily corrected. I only regret that I have compounded your frustration by borrowing the waste-paper basket to hold these fragments of bone and charcoal that we brought home from the Lindall affair on Tuesday, with the result that the evidence of your false start now resposes in the coal-scuttle on top of my cigars.”

“Honestly, Holmes, you can be intolerable at times,” I retorted. “You attach entirely too much importance to being right, and not nearly enough to being pleasant.”

“I should hardly be a success in my profession if I were not generally right,” said he blandly. “As for being pleasant, I do not find it particularly useful for my work, though I am more grateful than you may think that you set me so frequent and gracious an example.”

I was a little taken aback by this rather undeserved compliment, and could find no better remark to make than to return to the question of the current year. “You are quite right about 1896 and 1897,” I admitted, “although I have learned that in the time to come, very few readers will pay any attention to the dates in any case, and that all our adventures will be considered to have taken place in 1895.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes thoughtfully. “Including, I suppose, those that have not yet taken place at all?”

“Including those,” I assured him. “For example, it is now almost two years since the eventual date of the Garrideb affair, which has not yet taken place. I am quite anxious to get that one over with, I can tell you, since I expect to suffer some bodily injury at its climax.”

“Perish the thought,” said my friend. “But surely you are at no real risk, since you seem to be suggesting that you and I, far from being the humble investigators of Baker Street — who breakfast on ordinary toast and dine on humble mutton if they are not meanwhile summoned to the scene of some gory outrage — will become timeless, and thus immortal.”

“I make no claim to immortality, although I dare to hope that some of my words will live after me,” I said. “But there is no doubt that some of these questions about the dates of your cases — our cases, if I may be so bold — are perplexing in the extreme. You will recall that I attributed the affair at Wisteria Lodge to the year 1892, a time when you were, in fact, somewhere in the Himalayas, and presumed by everyone, including myself, to have perished.”

Sherlock Holmes nodded. “I cannot recall the case in question, since in fact you have not yet written it and it has not even taken place, but somehow I know it to be true,” he said. “And I suppose it, like the others, will in the fullness of time be assigned instead to 1895. But these are deep waters. I perceive that this morning’s rain has ended, and there is a glimmer of sunshine in the sky at last; I wonder if you would care to accompany me on a stroll that may lead to a deeper understanding for us both?”

Five minutes later, we were walking arm-in-arm (we used to do that surprisingly often in those days) south along Baker Street, and a few steps to the east along Blandford Street brought us to what I had hitherto understood to be the Manchester Square Fire Station, an elegant pile in red-brick with stone facings.

“It is a hotel these days,” said Holmes, unsurprised at the garish awnings with which the building was now decorated. “Its restaurant has no very good reputation, but the accommodations are excellent, and entirely suitable for a London stay by the gentleman to whom I propose to introduce you.”

I pointed out with some asperity that there had been no mention of any such gentleman, and that I would have preferred the courtesy of a little advance notice of such an encounter. “I might at least have brought a notebook,” I observed.

“I believe you will find the next hour or two sufficiently memorable that you will have no need of notes,” said my friend with a twinkle in his grey eyes. Taking hold of my elbow, he escorted me through the front door of the establishment, across a lounge furnished in a curious combination of familiar comfort and garish modernity, and into what proved to be an automatic lift that carried us upward with a whir of machinery.

“Our friend has rooms on the fourth floor,” he told me as we ascended. “He required a rather large suite, as a matter of fact, since he travels with a not inconsiderable part of his very large library.”

I looked at Holmes with some puzzlement. “His library? He could take out a subscription at the London Library, just as I do, you know, if his own books are not adequate to his needs.” I remembered that in a few years I would be making an urgent visit to my friend Lomax at the London Library in order to brief myself about Chinese pottery before playing a thoroughly unexpected role assisting Holmes in what would come to be known as the De Merville case.

“These are his own books, I assure you, Watson,” said my friend. “Indeed, some of them are literally his own books, as he is an author of some small repute in his own field — a narrow field, if I may say so, and yet a fecund one.”

“Holmes, stop,” said I firmly, suiting my action to my word by coming to a halt in the fourth-floor corridor of the hotel, and planting the tip of my umbrella firmly in the dark green carpeting. “Who is this gentleman, what are these books of which you speak, and what is the so-called narrow field in which he is an authority? If you are going to expect me to keep up a conversation about nervous lesions, or the theology of the Coptic church, or the obliquity of the ecliptic, I deserve a much clearer explanation than you seem willing to give me.”

“My dear fellow, I do apologize,” said Holmes. “I have a love of the dramatic, and I had thought that the surprise would be an enjoyable one for you, but I often forget that not everyone is equally entertained by such flamboyant gestures. We are on our way to meet Mr. Athol Aitcheson, who is originally from Canada, though he is now a more or less permanent resident in our London.”

“It is always a joy to meet a Canadian,” I responded, then paused, fearing that I might be quoting someone without giving credit for the felicitous phrase.

Holmes took no notice, but murmured in my ear that I should expect to find our new acquaintance more than a little eccentric. “According to the correspondence we have had in recent days, he knows more about you and me, Watson, than we do about ourselves, and we are here first of all to test his assertion.”

He rapped sharply on one of the room doors, marked with the numeral 406, and we heard a ponderous tread within, before the door opened and we saw a tall, stout, stooped gentleman whose hair and beard must once have been reddish, though they were now grey, indeed almost white. “Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson?” he enquired in a high voice. “Come in, come in.”

As we entered the room, or rather suite, I observed that it was furnished from wall to wall, and practically from floor to ceiling, with bookshelves, on which reposed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of volumes of all sizes and, apparently, every age and condition. I had no opportunity to read any of the titles, however, as Holmes immediately drew me into his conversation with Mr. Aitcheson.

“I have found your letters quite remarkable,” he told our host without wasting a moment on the pleasantries of conversation. “You claim to be a scholar not just of the past and present eras, but specifically of my own work and life?”

“Precisely so, Mr. Holmes,” said the man whose remarkable chambers we were visiting. “I am, if I may coin a word, a Holmesian — and, of course, a Watsonian also, since I am every bit as interested in the good doctor’s contributions to the common good as I am in your own.” I noted that he spoke with an accent which I took to be, indeed, Canadian: he pronounced the word “interested” with four syllables, and the sound of the R at the end of “doctor” was sharp and fully articulated.

“Indeed,” said Holmes coolly. “And how have you acquired the intimate knowledge of my work that you claim, since you have never before, to the best of my knowledge, been in my presence, visited my rooms in Baker Street, or interviewed Watson or any of my other acquaintances?” I felt a pang that he did not describe me as his friend, but I recalled that friendship was almost as alien to his whole being as was love itself.

“From my books, Mr. Holmes, from my books,” Mr. Aitcheson explained, gesturing at the tall oak shelves that took up two sides of the sitting-room. I looked more closely now, and discovered that our remarkable host possessed several copies of my little narrative entitled The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I was rather sure had not yet been published, as well as The Sign of the Four, telling the story of the adventure that had been the occasion of my meeting my cherished, but now sadly deceased, wife Mary. Looking further, I saw that other shelves were crammed with volumes titled Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, Watson’s Chronology Revisited, The Cynical Mr. Holmes, Baker Street By-Ways, and much more of the same, all suggesting that authors had been at work for years recording and reconsidering my experiences in Holmes’s company. I scarcely knew what to think.

“You have transcended the difficulty of contemporaneity, then,” Holmes suggested to Mr. Aitcheson, in a remark that I understood every bit as well as his abstruse table-talk a few days earlier about the Buddhism of Ceylon. Out of delicacy I have perhaps not recorded that it was often necessary for me to pretend an interest in Holmes’s extended conversation that I did not entirely feel.

Aitcheson had apparently agreed with this remark from my friend, as he was continuing to explain that although we were in fact living in the year 1897, it was at the same time possible for all our exploits to be located in 1895, and for the writings of scholars from years far in the future to rest solidly on his bookshelves — “so long as one believes, Mr. Holmes, so long as one believes. As one of your admirers has said, or possibly has yet to say, only those things the heart believes are true.”

I expected Holmes to dismiss these sentiments as mere raving, but he simply looked closely at the Canadian and glanced at one or two of the shelves behind him. “And you are yourself the master of everything that these volumes contain?” he asked.

“Oh, not everything, not everything,” came the response. “If I knew all that there was to know, I would no longer need the books, and that is unthinkable. But I have mastered a great deal of it, beyond doubt.”

“I presume you will allow me to test you?” Holmes pressed him.

“Of course. I expected no less.”

“Tell me, then, about the adventure of the second stain, which both did, and did not, involve a gracious lady whom Watson has chosen to identify as Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope.”

“As you say,” Aitcheson replied. “There is the curious narrative involving the stolen letter, the spy Lucas, and the death in Godolphin Street. Did you know, by the way, that Godolphin Street, had it existed, would have been named for Sidney Godolphin, a politician who had a precipitous fall from power at the beginning of the eighteenth century?”

“I did not,” said Holmes firmly, “and now that you have told me, I shall do my best to forget it. Pray continue with what you know of the second stain.”

“Yes, yes,” said Aitcheson. “As I say, there was that case; but there was also another second stain, a case in which the good doctor here retains an almost verbatim report of the interview in which you demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubugue of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues. It has been suggested that the new century will have come before the story can be safely told, but since the year will still be 1895 even when the new century makes its appearance, I am not sure that it will ever be truly safe.”

My friend was rarely at a loss for words, but I could see that he was unsure how to respond to this display of erudition and verbosity.  
“Mr. Aitcheson,” I intervened, “perhaps I too might pose a question?”

“Of course, doctor,” he said with a nod. I will not assert that he smiled, as his face seemed to be set in a perpetual scowl, with a wrinkling of the forehead suggesting short-sightedness, but his voice seemed genial enough.

I had been ransacking my brain for something that might test our new acquaintance’s breadth of knowledge. “What do you know, pray, of Tapanuli fever?” I asked him. “What do you know of the black Formosa corruption?”

“Nothing,” he told me frankly. “It is of the greatest importance that neither you nor I should have any awareness of such evils, lest we be unable to dissemble in the presence of Culverton Smith.” I was practically sure that Culverton Smith lay in the future rather than the past, but I let the matter pass.

“Tell me, then,” Holmes picked up the conversation again, “what do you know of my old friend Dr. Lysander Starr, who was mayor of Topeka in 1890?”

“Ah,” Aitcheson chuckled, “you have used that gambit before, have you not?” Holmes nodded. “One might call it an alternative fact,” our remarkable host went on. “The truth is that there was never a Dr. Starr in the mayor’s chair at Topeka. The mayor of the capital city — you do know, I am sure, that Topeka is the capital of the Sunflower State — the mayor in 1890 was, in fact, Roswell L. Cofran, a businessman, Freemason and Shriner. He served as mayor for no fewer than four terms. Cofran was born in Vermont, and served with the Sixth Vermont Infantry in the Civil War, later became a machinist, came to Kansas in 1870, worked for the Topeka (later Western) Foundry and Machine Works, and became its owner. The business closed — well, I need not take the story so far into the future, I think.”

Holmes nodded in agreement, and I found myself nodding in drowsiness. Our new acquaintance was thorough, but not necessarily enthralling.

“Now let me ask you,” Holmes was saying, “a little about my dealings with the Duke of Holdernesse, particularly the financial aspects of the matter as you understand them.” I turned away and glanced idly along one or two of the bookshelves, coming after a moment to what appeared to be Aitcheson’s own writings. I saw that he had edited a volume entitled About Sixty — sixty what, I wondered? — and another little book labelled Quotations from Baker Street, which suggested to my mind that he had been listening at our street-door.

Then my eye strayed a little further to the right, and I caught my breath sharply. I pulled the volume from the shelf and leafed through it rapidly, scarcely believing what I was seeing. “Holmes!” I heard myself saying. “Did you know about this?” I held the book out toward him, a slim volume in a yellow-and-orange dust-wrapper. Its title was In Bed with Sherlock Holmes.

“Yes, yes, I did, Watson,” I heard Holmes’s voice, tinged with amusement but coming as if from a great distance. “I am astonished that you did not, after all the time we have spent together at close quarters in Baker Street.”

It appears that I must have fainted for the second time in my life, the first of course being upon Holmes’s apparent return from the grave at the time of the Ronald Adair mystery in Park Lane. Certainly a mist in rainbow hues swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over me, his flask in his free hand.

“Ah, Watson,” he was saying. “It is good to see your eyes open, in more senses than one. With the assistance of our friend Mr. Aitcheson, I have brought you home to our Baker Street rooms, and placed you here upon my bed. There are, I believe, a few more discoveries still to be made before this momentous day is over.”


End file.
